BP says no more oil going into Gulf of Mexico

BP says oil from its broken well has stopped gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since April.

July 15, 2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

NEW ORLEANS --

BP says oil from its broken well has stopped gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since April.The announcement Thursday came after company officials said all valves had been shut on a new cap over the busted well in an experiment to stop the spill.

Overnight, robots had worked on a leak that was discovered after two of the three valves on the cap that can open or shut the device had been closed. It was the second delay in 48 hours.

According to BP PLC vice president Kent Wells, the overnight leak in a pipe on the side of the towering, 75-ton capping stack was fixed by replacing the assembly, called a "choke line."

BP slowly closed three valves, checking the pressure every 12 seconds, with progress reports every six hours.

Wells had warned that the process of getting ready and then choking the oil a mile below the sea, at a depth only submarine robots can reach, consisted of many precise, individual steps.

The cap remains a temporary fix, he said, until one of two relief wells BP is drilling can reach the gusher underground and plug it permanently with heavy drilling mud and cement.

With the leaking pipe replaced, BP had to start from a few steps back to resume preparations for the test.

Preparations included letting more oil pour out of the cap temporarily and turning off a pipe that had been sending some of the oil to a collection ship, so that the full force of all the erupting crude would go into the cap. Engineers also had to recheck equipment and move undersea robots that perform the work back into position.

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